In the gray light of early morning Hicks felt the fury of impotence as he tried to rise. He unwound the coat that covered his head, forgetful, unmindful for the moment of the man whom he had guarded during the night. He seemed fastened to the surface of the stone. Dimly he knew that his legs burned with an awful pain. But the feeling of pain was lost in his marvelling at his inability to rise. Not far, distant voices sounded. Soon a detail of men filed along the gulley, commenting among themselves upon the havoc of the night. He called weakly to the men who were approaching. As their hands touched him he lost his senses and all went black.
IX
It was the night for relief. Fourteen men, with the remainder of their equipment about them, huddled around in a group waiting for the new troops to appear and take over their sector. They were tired, hungry, and nerve-racked; the word “morale” could not conceivably be associated with them. Their three weeks’ experience in the woods had so bludgeoned their senses that they had been unresponsive when told that they were to be relieved. But after a while they partly recovered under the stimulation of the picture of warm food and a shelter of comparative safety. From a thick apathy they became clamorous, ill at ease, waiting for the new men to come. As the darkness grew their nerves twitched, and they peered often and again down the gulley from which the relief was to come into sight. At last a muffled clatter reached their ears. It swelled and was accompanied by voices in a polyglot of tongues. Cigarette lights and the flare of matches were seen along the line of the incoming horde.
Lieutenant Bedford had risen at their approach. Now he nervously shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “The drafted idiots,” he muttered, “do they want to kill all of us with these lights? Hey, you guys,” he called, “put out those damned matches.” A swell of jeers greeted him.
“All right, Third Platoon, let’s go. If these damned fools want every German gun to start pounding at them, let them. Come on.”
The platoon rose wearily and dragged through the woods in the direction of the village. Their spirits were so depressed, their bodies so fatigued, that, though the village was but two miles distant, an hour had elapsed before they marched through the cluttered streets between the rows of battered houses. But they did not stop. The outline of the village faded and on they tramped. Behind them shells rumbled over from the German lines, and, in answer, the crack and the sudden flare of a large gun being fired sounded to the right and left of them. At the noise the men’s muscles tightened, their nostrils narrowed and were bloodless. At the appearance of danger unheralded they were thorough automata; the explosions urged on their tired legs, whose muscles seemed tied in inextricable knots. Thick forests rose on each side of the tortuous white road, their dark-blue tops bewitchingly patterned against the sky. Where the woods were divided by a narrow path the platoon turned off, marching between the trees.
Farther in the woods, where the path widened slightly, the men halted. In ten minutes they were curled up in their blankets, asleep.
The platoon awoke in the heat of the day. In the woods the leaves of the trees were unruffled by a breeze. Glaring down from directly above, the sun was a monstrous incinerator. But for it all nature would have been inanimate. The men stretched experimentally. Their empty intestines made them aware of themselves. From among the trees floated a rich odor of frying food. “Steak,” some one guessed. The smell intensified their hunger, weakened them. King Cole, shading the sun from his owl-like eyes, sat up and sniffed.